Weekend in Vienna Part 4

So, as the travel gods would have it, I now have broken the tie between Vienna and Karlovy Vary for most visited places. For this weekend, I travelled for the 4th time to Vienna. But to add a little spice to it, I did it by bus, which is something I have yet to do. It was quite a lot of fun, and a lot of relaxing times were had. It was my first time to be there while the weather was quite warm. So that was fun. So anyways, let me tell you about a little bit of my trip to Vienna.

I left Prague at 8AM on Friday (for I don't teach on Fridays this year which is something I plan on enjoying since i have to work my butt off the first 4 days to achieve this great feat. So anyways, we got there at about 1230 or so and made our way to the apartments that I had reserved online. It was quite interesting and I wasn't quite sure how it was going to work out. First thing it wasn't a hostel or a hotel that we were staying at, it was like a real apartment, and there wasn't a real home office where I could check in at or anything. I just told on my reservation that I would be there between 1 and 2. And so we got there after a few botched directions which i claim the fault of bad translation to English, but whatev. And so we got there and wouldn't you know it, that the lady showed up within minutes after we got there at about 125ish or so, give or take. But, another interesting mix to throw into it was that the lady didn't speak English at all, and though I claim to have impeccable German, I'm a bit of a liar and know only enough to almost survive never ever in Germany, so that was fun to explain everything we needed and what we should do when we leave, but it all worked out.

From here we headed out to the town to see what we've been waitin for. After walking around a bit, it was time for a beloved reunion among comrades. One of my fellow colleagues, Zdenek, with whom i've taught with my first two years moved to Vienna and is now working down there. And so, as luck would have it, his schedule just so happened to be free most of the weekend, so we were able to meet up.
First things first. We met up at the center where the big cathedral of Stephen is and from there went to a nice little coffee shop called Aida, where all the little fools there wear pink. But the cakes there are quite tasty and delicious a thousand times over. I also got a "grosser brauner" which is like a strong cappucino or something like that. It's coffee. We'll say that and keep it at that. From here we all took a little stroll around the city for a bit, and as the night started to show itself quite clearly, we stopped in for a bite to eat (thus dinner) which was a tasty meal. I believe I had some kind of gulasch which was an interesting little bit of information considering it tasted a lot like chilli. So it was rather good, but filling and i couldn't finish it. And oh how I enjoyed the fact that the itty bitty drinks in western europe cost as much as the meal.
So I sampled a little bit of Austrian culture, something called "sturm". If you've been to Czech Republic anytime around this time, in czech it's called "burcak", and in english it's called "young wine", but don't worry, you've never heard of it in english. This was quite good and a bit different from czech burcak, so i was happy to experience a little bit of history in this adventure.

After this delicious meal, we went to and made our trek across the center of town to the far center near where I was staying to where was "the best icecream in the world!!" or so says Zdenek's friend. But it was rather good. The icecream was pretty darn good by the way. So that was a lot of fun. After this we watched a big celebration on the canal and retreated to our headquarters for a nice worryfree sleep.

As the sun crossed paths with the earth once again in the morning, we elected to get up and commence our day. It just so happens that our living arrangements (which were great by the way. Quiet and beatiful) was in the middle of the turkish/orthodox Jew/other weird foreigner district. And right outside was this pretty sweet market. Went to a bakery, got some pastries and milk and headed off. And you wouldn't believe it, but at 830, the place was just hoppin. the place being the center of vienna. People everywhere, just walking around, working, doin all sorts of crazy things you wouldn't believe. We walked along just as normal and had decided that we wanted to go and visit the great Albertina Museum.
In this museum was a special exhibition that had just opened a few days before. It is called Monet to Picasso: The Batliner collection. This collection of artwork consisted of over 500 pieces of art. These pieces had been acquired one at a time by the Batliner family and had been hanging on the walls throughout their house for numerous years, but now the Batliners donated all their millions of dollars worth of artwork to the Albertina Museum and it really was a pretty amazing collection. You could only imagine how amazing the house must be that the Batliners live in for all the pieces of art to fit inside. It's quite crazy actually. We were there for 3 hours and then commenced walking around again the city. And of course I can't forget our walk to the Hundertwasser Haus. It was pretty cool looking and well worth a look at.

Another thing of note was the beautiful story of The Sacher Hotel. Now this hotel makes a world famous chocolate cake which is indeniably very tasty. You should go and try it. The story goes as followed. The king wanted the chef to cook something up new and the chef just threw some things together and poof, there you have it. Hm... maybe look up the story on the internet. I don't remember it that well. But its a cool story.


We met up with my friend Zdenek and another friend and we drove about 45 minutes outside of Vienna to a small town called Gumpoldskirchen. This town is unique in the same way every town in Austria is unique. This town, of about 5-7000 people is a big wine village, and in these villages there aren't really restaurants, but the homes turn into restaurants. And each home is only allowed to be a restaurant for about 2 or 3 weeks every 3 or 4 months, and then it moves to another house and they are the restaurant hereafter for the next few weeks. It's really pretty cool. So the village must be really close. It's cool. ANd they only serve wine (which was excellent by the way), no beer. It was a really cool experience. It's strange to go to a small village of 5000 people and see all these tourist buses driving in and parking and all going to these restaurants. Apparently it's something awesome... which it is if you didn't hear me say it first. So that was awesome, and then we came back

After this meeting, we came back and walked around a bit at night time and saw lots of beautiful memories and then came back and went to bed. We woke up the next morning and came back home... :)